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CBBC Newsround has a new interview with the director of the upcoming film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Mike Newell, who is taking over the helm from Alfonso Cuaron, spoke briefly about his fellow director :

“Of course, what I had wanted to do was introduce the darker adolescent tone myself and found to my horror that Alfonso had gotten there before me and with great style and determination,” said Newell.

There is one hint about the fourth Potter film. “Newell also said the costumes worn by the French girls in the films “drive the Hogwarts boys absolutely mad”.

Also, Variety has a much longer interview with the director, and Mike Newell speaks about the idea of splitting the Goblet of Fire film into two parts, which was ultimately rejected.

In the end, screenwriter Steve Kloves was among those who pressed for a single movie. “Steve wasn’t sure what to do with the material he would have had to dispense with in order to make the first one … coherent enough for a whole second film,” says Newell.

So the challenge became how to make this film different enough to stand apart yet recognizably of a piece with the others. “What you do,” says the helmer, “is you pack it with references and suggestions and so forth which, of course, you have taken from the book. So that a reader coming to the film goes, ‘Oh, I see. I get it. They did it that way.’ You’re the guardian of the book, and at the same time, you have absolutely to be able to step off the books and say, ‘We had better distill this.’ Distillation is a very good word for it.”